Oldhammer: Slambo

Procession of Ancestral Brutalism

Although I love plastic miniatures, periodically, I get the urge to revisit old metal models. There is just something so charming about Citadel’s old range of single piece metal models, from the awkward poses to the sometimes odd merger of fantasy and sci-fi. Years back I painted an old Ork Tinboy and a Imperial Guardsmen from the Rogue Trader era, and Eric painted Hess Poison Breath just last year. I recently came across my copy of the original Slambo model, one I had modified slightly with greenstuff to improve his boots, which had been set aside after I had experimented with making silicone molds with him. Seeing him again, still without paint, and after I had finally painted an old Imperial Guard model from years back, made me come to the conclusion that now was Slambo’s time to be finished.

Making a two part mold: Casting resin models

I venture into creating silicone molds...

Having spent the better part of two months working on sculpting a true-scale Space Marine, it became clear that I could not continue to resculpt power armor each time that I wanted to make a new true-scale marine. I decided that the surest solution would be to make a rubber mold to cast additional copies of the armor. Although the process of making a silicone mold and using it to create resin casts is relatively straightforward, it was something that I had absolutely no knowledge about, so I was quite apprehensive about it all. After watching a YouTube video or two about the process, I decided I would give it a go, and ordered a starter kit from Smooth-On. Now that I have made my first mold, I wanted to share some of the things that I learned from the experience to hopefully encourage others to start creating molds to cast custom-made or sculpted components.